Patricia Lockwood on A. S. Byatt's Possession
Patricia Lockwood, shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize for her debut No One Is Talking About This, revisits her favourite Booker Prize winner
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Patricia Lockwood’s sincere and delightfully profane love letter to the infinite scroll, and a meditation on love, language and human connection.
A social media guru travels the world, her entire existence overwhelmed by the internet or what she terms ‘the portal’. ‘Are we in hell?’ The people of the portal ask themselves. ‘Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?’ Two urgent texts from her mother pierce the guru’s bubble. As real life collides with the absurdity of the portal, she confronts a world that seems to suggest there is goodness, empathy and justice in the universe - and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.
Patricia Lockwood
About the Author
Patricia Lockwood is an American poet, novelist and essayist who was born in a trailer in Indiana and raised 'in all the worst cities of the Midwest'.The internet – in the form of social media, at least – is much more like fiction than it is anything else
Watch videos
Listen to an extract from No One Is Talking About This
Kristen Sieh brings No One is Talking About This to life in the audiobook.
Bloomsbury Publishing · No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, read by Kristen Sieh
Lockwood’s genius for irony is matched by the radiance of her reverence, when she lets it show
What the Booker Prize Book Club said
‘In the past I’ve often been guilty of talking myself out of reading a book I don’t think I’ll like or that might be too difficult and of being swayed not to read a book by other people’s reviews, but I am beginning to realise that I’m missing out on some wonderful novels by doing so. No one is talking about this’ is a case in point. The first half of this semi-autobiographical novel describes the narrator’s interactions on the internet, and in particular a platform called The Portal.
To read this first part is to feel like you have travelled down the internet rabbit- hole - you realise that you have been browsing for three hours when all you wanted to do was find a particular recipe for the evening meal; some of it might be boring, some is completely baffling, but you’re still there, experiencing the world vicariously and reading about things you don’t care about. Lockwood treats this with wry, mischievous humour as she relates some of the narrator’s observations. …I surprised myself by absolutely loving this book.’
Jackie Pentreath, The Booker Prize Book Club
The Booker Prize Book Club
The road to the Booker
Lockwood_ Author Timeline_6 from Jen on Vimeo.
